Women In Law

"Men should stop treating feminists like ladies, and instead treat them like the men they say they want to be."

"And the first commandment of feminism is: I am woman; thou shalt not tolerate strange gods who assert that women have capabilities or often choose roles that are different from men's."

"The worst censors are those prohibiting criticism of the theory of evolution in the classroom."

"Non-criminal sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for the virtuous woman except in the rarest of cases."

"It is long overdue for parents to realize they have the right and duty to protect our children against the intolerant evolutionists."

"Minors are an intended audience for the highly profitable sex industry. Impressionable teenagers are easily persuaded to have abortions, and homosexual clubs in high school are designed for the young."

"The judges' obsession with smut is astounding."

"ERA means abortion funding, means homosexual privileges, means whatever else."

"I believe that we need to bring a significant number of our troops home. That’s the only that we send a clear message to the government of Iraq that we’re serious about this and that they need to start taking responsibility for their own country.... I am one who does not believe that we can bring all the troops home tomorrow. The situation is too precarious. But I believe we need to start this year, in the very near future, drawing down the troops."

"Harris certainly benefits from the fact that few Democratic officeholders come to mind who could defeat her for the Democratic presidential nomination. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar performed well during her 2020 bid for the Democratic nomination, and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has charisma and speaking skills. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg impressed some during his 2020 presidential run, as did Elizabeth Warren, who will turn 75 before the 2024 presidential election. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is an obvious name to consider, as is Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, if she is reelected in November."

"Klobuchar has proven cross-party support that I fear Warren will lose in key electoral states."

"Amy Klobuchar has a joke she'd like you to hear"

"For a brief moment last Tuesday after the Democratic presidential debate, past the hallways that snaked from the spin room to the exit near the back of the Gaillard Center in South Carolina, two of the candidates ended up stuck together in a small room, unable to leave. There was a problem with the door — security needed to unlock it — and so they stood together waiting. Had chance put them there with anybody else, it might’ve been a moment of awkward silence. Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders dislike plenty of people, but not each other. The fact of their friendship, based on a little-discussed, yearslong mutual respect, is all at once entirely unexpected and intuitively obvious. As candidates, they shared a stubborn force of will and a fierce distaste for their enemies — both of them salty, but in vastly different ways. As senators, they work together all the time, but in matters of ideology and political sensibility, they agree on very little. He, for example, will hate this article — see: "political gossip," personality-driven media, etc. She already loves it."

"Congestion at ports and increased shipping costs pose unique challenges for U.S. exporters, who have seen the price of shipping containers increase four-fold in just two years. Meanwhile, ocean carriers have reported record profits. This legislation will level the playing field by giving the Federal Maritime Commission greater authority to regulate harmful practices by carriers and set rules on what fees carriers can reasonably charge shippers and transporters. As we work to improve our supply chains, I’ll keep fighting to establish trade opportunities for the U.S."

"If this decision doesn’t cry out for that, I don’t know what does"

"My life and my career and my work in the Senate has been about economic opportunity. And to me, this means better childcare for everyone in this country. And when you want an economy that works, you need to have retirement that works, you need to have public schools that work. And you also need to make sure that those communities are able to get those jobs of the future, the STEM jobs. In fact, Donald Trump, one of the first bills that he signed of the 34 he signed where I was the lead Democrat -- OK, that's a first up here -- was one that was about that, making sure minority community members could share in those jobs. So to me, this is about a few things. It's about an African-American woman that goes to a hospital in New Orleans, says her hands are swollen, and then doctor ignores her and her baby dies. It's about the fact that African-American women make 61 cents for every dollar a white man makes. So in short, we need, one -- and I will do this in my first 100 days as president -- we will work to make sure everyone can vote at this table, everyone can vote in this country and we will also go to the next step of criminal justice reform. Senator Booker and I worked on that First Step Act, but we should go to the second step act, which is to help all our communities across our country."

"TODD: Thank you, Congressman O'Rourke. Hang on. Let me give 30 seconds, Senator Klobuchar, the iron range. I'm curious. Gun confiscation, right? If the government is buying back, how do you not have that conversation?"

"Immigrants, they do not diminish America. They are America. And I am happy to look at his proposal. But I do think you want to make sure that you have provisions in place that allow you to go after traffickers and allow you to go after people who are violating the law. What I really think we need to step back and talk about is the economic imperative here. And that is that 70 of our Fortune 500 companies are headed by people that came from other countries. Twenty-five percent of our U.S. Nobel laureates were born in other countries. We have a situation right now where we need workers in our fields and in our factories. We need them to start small businesses. We need their ideas. And this president has literally gone backwards at a time when our economy needs immigrants. And so my proposal is to look at that 2013 bill that passed the Senate with Republican support, to upgrade that bill, to make it as good as possible and get it done. It brings the debt down by $158 billion."

"I just want to say, there's three women up here that have fought pretty hard for a woman's right to choose. I'll start with that. And then I just want to make very clear, I think we share the goal of universal health care. And the idea I put out there, the public option, which the governor was just talking about, this idea is that you use Medicare or Medicaid without any insurance companies involved, you can do it either way. And the estimates are 13 million people would see a reduction in their premiums, 12 more million people would get covered. So I think it is a beginning and the way you start and the way you move to universal health care."

"Well, I think it's a bold approach. It's something that Barack Obama wanted to do when we were working on the Affordable Care Act. And that is a public option. I am just simply concerned about kicking half of America off of their health insurance in four years, which is exactly what this bill says. So let me go on beyond that. There is a much bigger issue in addition to that, and that is pharmaceuticals. The president literally went on TV, on Fox, and said that people's heads would spin when they see how much he would bring down pharmaceutical prices. Instead, 2,500 drugs have gone up in double-digits since he came into office. Instead, he gave $100 billion in giveaways to the pharma companies. For the rest of us, for the rest of America, that's what we call at home all foam and no beer. We got nothing out of it. And so my proposal is to do something about pharma, to take them on, to allow negotiation under Medicare, to bring in less expensive drugs from other countries. And pharma thinks they own Washington? Well, they don't own me."

"Well, first, the economy. We know that not everyone is sharing in this prosperity. And Donald Trump just sits in the White House and gloats about what's going on, when you have so many people that are having trouble affording college and having trouble affording their premiums. So I do get concerned about paying for college for rich kids. I do. But I think my plan is a good one. And my plan would be to, first of all, make community college free and make sure that everyone else besides that top percentile gets help with their education. My own dad and my sister got their first degrees with community college. There's many paths to success, as well as certifications. Secondly, I'd used Pell grants. I'd double them from $6,000 to $12,000 a year and expand it to the number of families that get covered, to families that make up to $100,000. And then the third thing I would do is make it easier for students to pay off their student loans. Because I can tell you this: If billionaires can pay off their yachts, students should be able to pay off their student loans."

"If you feel stuck in the middle of the extremes in our politics, you've got a home with me."

"The whole thing doesn't quite make sense and it's just another example of the President treating foreign policy like its some kind of game show. This isn't a game show, these are terrorists."

"I see natural gas as a transition fuel. It is better than oil but not nearly as good as wind and solar. I am being honest on what we need to do. We won't immediately get rid of it."

"I have won every place, every race — every time I've won."

"At a time when we must heal the heart of our democracy and renew our commitment to the common good, I stand before you as the granddaughter of an iron ore miner, as the daughter of a teacher and a newspaperman, as the first woman elected to the United States Senate from the state of Minnesota, to announce my candidacy for president of the United States."

"Ted Kennedy’s wit and stories, his passion for a cause and his country, and his love for the Senate just made you want to go to work every day. I had the privilege to serve with Ted Kennedy in the Senate for just two years. He was a mentor to so many of us just starting out, not in the traditional "this is how you get it done" way, but instead as an inspiration. He never gave up and had a fiery zest for the legislative battles that was always tempered by a bipartisan pragmatism. He was incredibly strong and effective and had the deep respect of everyone that worked with him."

"So what's the cost of the culture of corruption? Of people giving breaks to the oil companies and giving giveaways and Christmas presents to the drug companies and the insurance companies? The cost is $90 billion a year. There you go. Quantifiable."

"When I was a young lawyer, working women wore hats. It was the only way they would take you seriously."

"Bella Abzug established a standard of integrity and chutzpah (nerve, courage) that challenges us all to tell the truth and to fight back."

"I believe in the stubbornness of civil disobedience and I'm not afraid of it. I remember one May Day demonstration. In 1971. Still wartime. We were arrested and we were in this big, sort of football field. Barbara Deming and I were walking around, arm in arm. We had been arrested together. It was very cold. Everybody was finding someone to walk very close to. Later on, one person wasn't enough, we would try to get into groups that huddled: fifteen. But at that point, Barbara and I were walking arm in arm and it was a pretty messy place, because that was the year they arrested thirteen or fourteen thousand people, just picking them up off the street, and then they didn't know what the hell to do with them. At that point we were in a football field. Later, we were put inside a stadium. And so we were walking around, arm in arm, talking to each other, and then congresspeople came in to see what was going on, and Bella Abzug came over to talk to us. She and I had always had these disagreements about the electoral work and what you can call action, direct action, and we would talk to each other about this. So she came over and she looked at me and Barbara walking arm in arm. She asked how we were. She was a congresswoman at this time. She was worried about us. We said we were all right. And then she said, "Well, I guess you're where you want to be and I'm where I want to be." And we laughed, we all laughed together. And I want to say about Bella that she was at this Women's Pentagon demonstration. She came, she walked with everybody, she didn't look for any limelight of any kind. She just sort of walked, and begged me not to get arrested. Again, she said she thought it was a waste of time. I could do more outside. But she really was just a part of the action. That's what we wanted all of our leaders to be, just a part of the women's action."

"She did not appear in Brooklyn, but about five minutes before the Washington press conference started I had a call from an Abzug aide asking whether Bella could appear with me and my supporters at the event. I could not discover whether she intended to endorse me, or what she had in mind, but I said yes because I could see no reason to say no. After my statement, Mitchell and Dellums spoke; they gave me strong and moving endorsements. Then Bella made a strange statement, largely about movements and the underprivileged in politics. She said lit about my candidacy, except that it was "an idea whose time has come," if I remember correctly. Later a reporter asked her whether she had endorsed me or not. Bella hedged. She said she supported "the idea" of my candidacy and would support me in those states where I was running. Bella never offered to campaign for me in Florida, North Carolina or even New York, for that matter. It was a letdown, and also bewildering: if she intended to sit on the fence, why did she ask to appear with me when I made my announcement for the Presidency?"

"As activists and rebels, Jewish women like Emma Goldman, Maud Nathan, Rose Schneiderman, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan influenced many of the key social movements of their eras suffrage, trade unionism, international peace, and the contemporary women's rights movement."

"The vision that impels feminists to action was the vision of the Grandmothers' society, the society that was captured in the words of the sixteenth-century explorer Peter Martyr nearly five hundred years ago. It is the same vision repeated over and over by radical thinkers of Europe and America, from François Villon to John Locke, from William Shakespeare to Thomas Jefferson, from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, from Benito Juarez to Martin Luther King, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Judy Grahn, from Harriet Tubman to Audre Lorde, from Emma Goldman to Bella Abzug, from Malinalli to Cherríe Moraga, and from Iyatiku to me. That vision as Martyr told it is of a country where there are "no soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits... All are equal and free.""

"Some wonder how I have kept going for so long and how I manage to remain optimistic. When governments were removing the brackets from the document over the last two weeks, the French tested another nuclear weapon in the Pacific, NATO was bombing Bosnia and the Serbs were shelling Sarajevo. Refugee camps overflowed in too many places around this globe. Conditions for women on factory floors did not change. Women died in childbirth and in their homes Hunger gnawed at the bellies of millions. The world went on, in its downward spiral we all know all too well. In the face of so much pain, I remain an incurable optimist. I am fueled by the passion of the women I have been privileged to meet and work with, buoyed by their hope for peace, justice and democracy. I am strengthened by each of them. And to each government delegate who pushed the boundaries of progress I thank you. I thank the United Nations and my sisters in the NGO community for your good humor and hard work. I wish each of you well and sustainable optimism for the days ahead. Never underestimate the importance of what we are doing here. Never hesitate to tell the truth. And never, ever give in or give up."

"As women, we know that we must always find ways to change the process because the present institutions want to hold on to power and keep the status quo."

"We are bringing women into politics to change the nature of politics, to change the vision, to change the institutions. Women are not wedded to the policies of the past. We didn't craft them. They didn't let us."

"Just imagine for a moment what life in this country might have been if women had been properly represented in Congress. Would a Congress where women in all their diversity were represented tolerate the countless laws now on the books that discriminate against women in all phases of their lives? Would a Congress with adequate representation of women have allowed this country to reach the 1970s without a national health care system? Would it have permitted this country to rank fourteenth in infant mortality among the developed nations of the world? Would it have allowed the situation we now have in which thousands of kids grow up without decent care because their working mothers have no place to leave them? Would such a Congress condone the continued butchering of young girls and mothers in amateur abortion mills? Would it allow fraudulent packaging and cheating of consumers in supermarkets, department stores and other retail outlets? Would it consent to the perverted sense of priorities that has dominated our government for decades, where billions have been appropriated for war while our human needs as a people have been neglected?"

"Imperfect though it may be, the Beijing Platform for Action is the strongest statement of consensus on women's equality, empowerment and justice ever produced by governments...It is an agenda for change, fueled by the momentum of civil society, based on a transformational vision of a better world for all."

"Some of you may have been at the UN Decade of Women conferences in Nairobi in 1985. That was where global feminism came of age—a symbol of sisterhood, of international women’s networks, of our hopes for a better, fairer, safer world. Nairobi was the birthplace of the “Forward-Looking Strategies” document, the most comprehensive historic statement of our agenda, encompassing peace, equality, human rights, sustainable development and environmental protection. Now we must move on and expand our vision. The women’s movement is strong and continues to grow. We are everywhere, and we will be heard . . . or else we—women, men and children—will all hear from Mother Nature. Remember, hell hath no fury like a woman—or an Earth—scorned and despoiled."

"All over the world, ordinary citizens are coming forward to assert their democratic and human rights, and concern about the environment permeates their demands."

"Women are participating in large numbers at the grassroots levels, but in the overwhelming majority of nations, we still lack effective political power. And that is also true in the United Nations—in the Secretariat and in the member nation delegations."

"Women are both affected by and effectors of the environmental crisis. We must be part—a central part—of the solution. Our views on economic justice, human rights, reproduction and the achievement of peace—all elements of the environment/development crisis—must be heard at local, national, and international forums wherever policies and decisions are made that can affect the future of life on our planet."

"When I went to represent my law firm anywhere—I was a young kid just out of college—I said, “How do you do? I'm Bella Abzug from the law firm of such and such,” and people would say, “Yes, fine, fine, sit down.” So I'd wait and nothing much would happen, so finally I'd clear my throat and say, “I'm Bella Abzug from the law firm of such and such,” and they'd say, “Yes, we know, but we're waiting.” I'd say, “What are we waiting for?” And they'd say, “We're waiting for the lawyer.” They thought I was the secretary. So I had this identity crisis. I went home and discussed it with my husband, Martin. In those days professional women wore hats—and gloves, so I put on gloves and a hat. And every time I went anywhere for business, with the hat and gloves, they knew I was there for business. And I jokingly often say, as you can see, I've taken off the gloves. But I like wearing hats and I continue to wear it. When I ran for Congress and got to Washington, they made such a fuss about the hat instead of what was under it that I didn't know whether they wanted me to take it off or keep it on. I decided that they wanted me to take it off, which made me determined to keep it on."

"it was Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland’s vision and leadership as head of the UN Commission on Environment and Development that told us of “our common future” and what we must do to assure that we have a livable future. Dr. Brundtland is an inspiring example of what can happen when the right woman is in the right place."

"It was thousands of women marching and demonstrating against dangerous Strontium 90 nuclear fallout who helped to win the ban on atmospheric nuclear tests and who have continued their struggle against the nuclear arms race and hazards in areas ranging from Greenham Common, Europe and the U.S. to Africa and Asia."

"Women are not just victims. We are thinkers, organizers, and activists. We are part of a worldwide women’s movement that has brought into every nation of the world, no matter how poor or oppressed, the message that women can work together to take control of our lives and to bring our collective experience, wisdom, and numbers into the areas where the policies and decisions are being made about the future of our planet."

"much of what has been done in the name of progress and growth and development has been done without much regard for the effects on human beings—women, men and children—on water, air and soil, on our delicately balanced, intricately interconnected global ecology."

"Earth’s most valuable and most neglected natural resource: women."

"People are desperate for help, for leadership. There's no place else to go but to me, they say, and the sad thing is that very often they are right. That's what I want to help change."